Fat that Is Good for Your Heart, Food-Borne Illnesses Thrive in Salads, and Being Healthy Requires More Prep Time
Saturated dairy fat might be good for your heart.
Rabbit food tops list of riskiest foods from food-borne illness. Leafy greens are first, followed by eggs, tuna and oysters.
Healthy meals require 9 to 16 hours of food prep per week. The average woman spends only 5, however.
The article on preparation time for healthy meals is intriguing. I’m not sure how they calculated preparation time.
I realize grabbing a bucket of fried chicken from the Colonel’s drive-through window on the way home is easier than making a salad and steaming green beans. But does it really take two-to-three times as long? I’m a little skeptical.
Oh, about the articles on rabbit food being among the riskiest foods and how saturated fat might be good for the heart…
That just reinforces my opinion that all the time I saved by making fettuccine alfredo instead of “unhealthy” salads was a good decision!
The only thing on the risky food list that I don’t eat on a regular basis is oysters.
Ick.
And why does the prep time study list only women? My husband is the one in charge of lettuce washing. I do the veggie chopping. Minute per minute, we spend the same amount of time cooking. I’m just way more productive!
The data showing saturated fat as harmful is essentially non-existent. The more studies that were done, and the more money they spent on them, the less of a risk saturated fat appeared to be. By the last, most complex study, the affect completely disappeared.
The most healthy scientific act the medical community could take would be to announce once and for all. “Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease – or anything else. We were wrong, you can go back to eating it now.”
Why would this increase health? Because saturated fat has been replaced in packaged and restaurant food with sugar and hydrogenated oils. Those too things really are bad for you (and me).
The most egregious example was the 1997 campaign by The Center for Science in the Public Interest to remove animal fat from McDonalds French fries. McDonalds buckled to the pressure, but then put in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil instead – thereby increasing the number of heart attacks in the country.
What did McDonalds get in return? A documentary called “Super-Size Me”, which highlighted the unhealthiness of McDonalds food.
So in summary, the Dairy study is not a surprise.
I started buying only whole milk recently, but don’t use much anyway.
But who knew that norovirus was so versatile? Tuna, oysters, and tomatoes? Are the food-borne strains the same as the ones that cause occasional epidemics on cruise lines and in nursing homes?
James: great comment. how do these myths get started and repeated over and over again?
So, the NIH and the American Heart Association following the bulk of the research recommend that saturated fat is tied to high LDL levels which is strongly correlated to heart attack risk. One doctor from Sweden who is on the payroll of the Swedish Dairy Association and the International Dairy Federation publishes a study sponsored by the National Dairy Council that say eat all the butter and cheese you want. Who should you believe?
The NIH/American Heart Association assertion that dietary saturated fat affects mortality from coronary heart disease has been looking less persuasive in the last decade or so as evidence has accumulated from controlled dietary studies and molecular biologists study how plasma cholesterol levels are regulated.
It has long been known that a serum cholesterol responds to diet in a minority people. Now it appears that there are multiple genetic and environmental influences at work.
This is just one of many of the current claims made about “healthy eating” that look more like sales campaigns by rent seeking groups in favor of particular regulatory agendas than sober explanations of vetted models that have solid empirical backing.